Romanian Mami

I met Mami four years ago during my first winter season in Vail. She visits for several weeks at a time, usually over Christmas, and stays at the Marriott. She spends a couple hours every day in Bailey’s Coffee House where I work. Her name is Elena but she insists we call her Mami.

Mami is from Romania but lives in New York City. Her face is jolly and she wears tiny glasses with round frames that rest near the tip of her Cabbage Patch-doll nose. I imagine that with a bit of rouge on her round cheeks she would look like a cartoon. She is short, sturdy, and plump. She is grandmotherly in a wise and endearing way and has a teenage son, Roberto. Mami doesn’t ski she just reads, talks on her cell phone, and drinks her favorite white chocolate mocha, decaf and skinny with lots of syrup, while Roberto skis.

She told me once that I should visit Romania with her. It is a beautiful country, she said, where people drink bottles of wine on the ski slopes and the men are very handsome. She said she will translate for me when I find a good Romanian boy. I should not, however, get married too young; 24, she said, once I told her my age, is too young. She told me she married very well, and by well she means her husband is wealthy (her frequent use of his American Express card proves it), but much too young. She said she is sure I will find a nice boy one day because I’m skinny like she once was.

Mami has lived in Manhattan for about 15 years in an apartment near the World Trade Center site. When she talks about her neighborhood I think of her there on September 11, 2001. I imagine her close to the site of so much tragedy, praying in Romanian, crying, and hugging her son.

Mami never showed up around Christmas this year and I assumed it was due to the economy then she turned up one day in February. When I told her I had been wondering when I would see her this year or if she was coming at all, she started crying. She said she hadn't come over Christmas because her mother passed away and she had to go back to Romania. Then she pulled some photos out of her pocket; one was of her mother as a young woman, another of her mother about a year ago, and the last one was a picture of her mother's body in a casket. The casket was in a house, in what looked like a dining room, and Mami’s father stood next to it, his eyes puffy and red, she said he had wept for days. I was both moved and disturbed and I admired her for being so open with her grief. I didn’t know what to say so as she continued to cry and describe her pain I made her a white chocolate mocha, decaf, skinny, with lots of syrup.